Me, I worked for the local rag. My main job was to go through the news in brief section of the other local 'paper and rewrite them. I left when they insisted I should get a quote from someone whose child had just been run over. True, but sad, story.

just don't turn into an emotionally retarded moron 'bragging' that you've been out all night with someone who might know Beth Ditto and that you've got 345 promos that no one else in the world has got yet - this is when journalists go bad.

But seriously good going if you've penetrated the walls of NME - nice work!

I live in Cornwall so I definitely won't be hanging out with any of them unless they come here. So far, my promo pile is: Jesse Malin (bleurgh), Angus and Julia Stone (bleurgh), Maria Taylor (ok-ish), and soon the Sounds.

Promos aren't that exciting in a world of bittorrent and youtube, everything's all so freely available that it's not worth bragging about!

and until now the biggest thing I've written for is BBC TOTP website. From a popularity point of view, it's a great feeling to know that people all over the world could be reading what you've written/about your music.

oh how I miss the NME - it meant the world to me when I was growing up in Hotfuzz town, every wednesday was so important and sometimes reviews and news meant to much I'd come to blows with friends, such was the magnitude of my belief in everything they wrote.

When I did some work experience in London I squealed like a girl when they said it came out in the City on Tuesdays - I had to phone my friends and tell them the news even though it was 1998 and the internet existed. Such happy memories about that rag. You just grow out of it, 'I guess'. its a rites of passage, like collecting stamps or masturbating up trees.